UK student visa ‘Factory’ uncovered in London

[LahoreEstate]

LONDON: A student visa fraud ‘factory’ owned by an Indian couple has been unearthed along with thousands of false university certificates from India and Pakistan, false academic records from British colleges and fake bank statements and pay slips.



The discovery of Indian visa fraud factory with thousands of incriminating documents removes the cloak from what is seen here to be the biggest scam of its kind unveiling in the process the lead role being played by Indian fraudesters in such rackets.



The conviction of the Indian couple also appears to be the first ever obtained in a crime of this type. A couple of such fraud cases allegedly involving Pakistanis were recently reported by the media but so far none had been prosecuted or found guilty by the British courts.



A report in The Times on Thursday said Police and UK Border Agency (UKBA) officials found 90,000 documents during a raid on two warehouses and the premises of a company called Univisas, in Southall, West London, in February last year.



The operation led to the agency’s biggest investigation into organised immigration fraud and the discovery of an international criminal network stretching to the Indian sub-continent.



Many of the impeccable but totally false academic records were used by the clients to obtain two-year post-study work visas.



The Indian couple, both illegal immigrants earned millions of pounds from the ‘factory’ that helped an estimated 4,000 bogus students to cheat Britain’s ‘shambolic’ border controls.



The married couple, Jatinder Kumar Sharma and Rakhi Shahi, aided by a network of sham colleges, sold fake academic certificates to clients, who paid up to £4,000 each for a false educational history that would gain them the right to live in Britain. Their success, a Crown Court jury heard, was a damning indictment of the Home Office.



Sharma, 44, a solicitor, and Shahi, 31, are believed to have earned at least £3 million from their role in the fraud. Individuals running one of the London colleges that provided them with sham certificates and diplomas are thought to have been paid £9 million for their work.



At Isleworth Crown Court on Thursday Shahi was convicted of conspiracy to defraud, handling criminal property and immigration offences. She was sentenced to eight years in prison. Sharma pleaded guilty to his role in the conspiracy before the trial started and was sentenced to seven years. A third woman, a former teacher,Neelam Sharma, 38, was convicted of handling some of the money and was jailed for four years.



The court heard that in a secret recording one member of the gang boasted that Home Office officials ‘don’t even bother to look’ at visa application documents to check their authenticity. They ‘just stamp them blindly.’



The prosecutor said: ‘It is believed this prosecution represents the largest single prosecution of dishonest records ever submitted to the Home Office by an individual business. It is a huge attack on the system.’



Passing sentence, Judge Richard McGregor-Johnson said: ‘Various criticisms have been made of the actions of the agencies responsible for checking those documents. Those criticisms are plainly well founded in my view. The checks were woefully inadequate and frequently non-existent.’



He recommended that the defendants be deported at the end of their sentences.



Detective Chief Inspector Robert Hoey, of UKBA, told The Times: ‘We know of 1,000 foreign nationals who have come illegally into this country, but what we have discovered so far is merely a snapshot. It was an extremely sophisticated scheme.’


http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn...on--il--05